By Meteorologist Jeff Huffman From WRUF

It happened [a few days] ago. But did you even notice? Six months of nothing (in Florida, at least) came to an end on Sunday. The conclusion of the 2014 Hurricane Season marks the ninth year in a row the state has been lucky to avoid a direct strike from a hurricane, the longest running streak on record.

Season Recap

IMAGE: Number of storms in 2014. The 30-year average are in parenthesis.

One and done. The first storm of the season was the only storm to impact the United States in 2014. Hurricane Arthur brushed by Florida and made landfall in Cape Lookout, North Carolina on July 3rd as a Category 2 storm with winds of 100 mph. The next closest storm to making landfall, Hurricane Bertha, stayed over 500 miles from the United States in early August. After Arthur and Bertha, there were only six more named storms and the season was relatively quiet as predicted.

NOAA scientists and many private meteorologists predicted a season with below-normal activity, and it certainly was. A typical year breeds eleven named storms, six of which usually become hurricanes, and two reach Category 3 or stronger (major hurricane status) on average. In 2014, there were eight named storms, six hurricanes, and two major storms. While those numbers may not seem too far off from an average season, the accumulated tropical energy (known by the acronym ACE) tells a better story. According to Weather Underground, ACE measures the “destructive potential of individual tropical cyclones and entire tropical cyclone seasons”. In 2014, that number was 66, far below the average for an entire season of 110.

The strongest storm of the 2014 season was Gonzalo, reaching wind speeds of 145 mph on October 15. Similar to all of the other hurricanes this year, though, Gonzalo was a “fish storm” to Americans and stayed well out to sea. Bermuda, however, took a direct hit from the then Category 2 storm and sustained nearly 200 million dollars of damage. This followed a beating from Tropical Storm Fay just the week before.

Why So Quiet

IMAGE: Factors that led to lower than normal activity were high wind shear, cooler Atlantic waters, and occasional bouts of dry air.

While Bermuda bore the brunt of the 2014 hurricane season, the rest of the Atlantic Basin was largely left untouched. Multiple factors led to the overall quiet year. An El Niño weather pattern was forecast to develop, which is largely a deterrent to Atlantic tropical cyclone activity. While this never officially formed (by the number), warmer sea surface temperatures in the Eastern Pacific Ocean did contribute to faster winds aloft and higher than normal wind shear over the Atlantic Basin. In addition to this negative factor, dry air, cooler water over the central Atlantic, and large areas of stable air mitigated the overall seasonal activity.

The same weather pattern that kept the tropics largely quiet this year is still likely to influence the overall weather pattern across Florida this winter. WRUF Weather is working on a winter forecast and will release that in the coming days.

For more on this story go to: http://ufweather.org/2014/12/03/way-hurricane-season

 

Related story:

Reasons behind the quietest hurricane season in 30+ years

By Eric Sorensen, From WQAD8 [Updated]

While the Pacific Ocean has produced an above-normal number of tropical storms and hurricanes this year, the Atlantic Ocean remains a sleeping giant. The 2014 season which runs from June 1st to December 1st started quickly as Hurricane Arthur formed off of the Carolinas and moved ashore during the 4th of July Weekend. It did minimal damage as winds barely achieved hurricane criteria.

After that, four more storms came and went, all staying away from the United States. With only five storms this season, it’s the fewest since 1983! [The next storm was Fay. ]

The 2014 Atlantic Hurricane Season comes on the heels of a very quiet season last year. In fact, it seems as if the active season of 2005 broke the “storm machine!” It’s been nine years since a Category 3+ hurricane made landfall in the United States!

2005 was the most active storm season in recorded history. The season was the first to use “V” and “W” names, and when the season ran out of official alphabetical names after Wilma, Meteorologists went to the Greek alphabet for the first time. Four major hurricanes made landfall along the Gulf Coast in 2005. The eleventh named storm of the season went on to be one of the worst hurricanes in U.S. history: Katrina. Killing more than 1,000 people and causing more than a hundred billion dollars in damage, Katrina exceeded the worst-case scenarios in many people’s heads and became the most costly weather disaster in U.S. history.

But since that disaster, it’s as if the storm machine was shut off like a switch! One caveat is Super Storm Sandy which slammed the coast of New Jersey, lashing a record blow to New England around Halloween 2012. While controversial at the time, the National Hurricane Center changed the designation of Hurricane Sandy 2 1/2 hours before landfall calling it a “non-tropical storm.” For that reason, and the fact that a major hurricane has to have wind of at least 111 mph, we can’t really call Sandy a major hurricane. Nonetheless, Sandy did go on to produce $68 Billion in damage which was widespread from Massachusetts to the Carolinas.

But what happened since then? For one, a strong shearing wind has prevented storm formation in the ITCZ (Intertropical Convergence Zone). The ITCZ is the area from western Africa into the Caribbean where most tropical storms and hurricanes form, especially in the most active months of September and October. High winds aloft have prevented any systems from developing closed circulating low pressure systems. And with these high winds aloft set to continue through the end of the season, no significant storms are expected…at least here in the ITCZ.

Another reason for a lack of storms this year could be the pause in warming temperatures. Cooler than normal air temperatures have been observed across the U.S. Cooler temperatures and more progressive cool fronts moving into the Gulf of Mexico have kept the conditions unfavorable for development.

The quantity of storms in a season doesn’t matter nearly as much as whether a storm affects the coastline or a city. You probably don’t remember much about the 1989, 1992, or 2004 hurricane seasons but those were the years of Hugo, Andrew, Charley, and Ivan. All it takes is one.

For more on this story go to: http://wqad.com/2014/10/10/reasons-behind-the-quietest-hurricane-season-in-30-years/

IMAGE: www.cbsnews.com